Opening Up a World of Knowledge: Adapting Face-to-Face to OER

The Research Support Ambassador Programme began life as an intensive in-house training initiative for library staff at Cambridge University. Running as a series of face-to-face workshops it offered participants a chance to learn about the core areas of research support and how this related to their everyday roles. Although popular, the Programme experienced issues with participant retention and accessibility with its format meaning that it was closed to a number of potential learners - hardly the correct approach for a Programme emphasising open research. A radical overhaul of the Programme was undertaken and in 2019 it was relaunched as an Open Educational Resource (OER). Created using a standard LibGuide template, the OER features both new and adapted content designed to appeal to a range of learners including interactive guides further reading and discususion points. This poster outlines the steps taken to thnnreinvent the Programme including challenges around translating content to an open format, adapting face-to-face content for online use and making it truly accessible. Demonstrating how these challenges have been overcome it offers suggestions for how librarians could adapt their own in-house programmes into OERs to meet changing learner needs